In The Shadowy Neighborhood
by minasnowdrop82
Summary: Hikaru has been given the haunting fantasy, Kyoya tells her that the creepy little girl named Carol will kill her. She and Tsubasa discovers the life and death of Carol.
1. Prologue

**Hey, guys. It's Mina Snowdrop. I was thinking about Hikaru this morning and I'm going to start my new fanfic called 'In the Shadowy Neighborhood'. So Enjoy!**

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The bluenette girl had lived in the city all her life, and yet she knew nothing about the Neighborhood, and that frightened her.

She was a worker and blader. In the morning she took a bus to her first job and in the afternoon she took another bus to her other job and then she took a third bus home. She knew every neighborhood those busses passed through. They each had a personality of their own. Old neighborhoods sometimes died, but new neighborhoods were born all the time. A bluenette girl knew them all.

Except for one. Her morning bus took a shortcut down a narrow, shady avenue with a decorative fountain every day. Here was a neighborhood of only a few blocks filled with large, furtive-looking houses and drooping willow trees and silence. Like all of the city's neighborhoods it had a name, but people rarely spoke it. In A bluenette girl's mind it was just the Neighborhood. She would give it no name more definite than that. She was afraid to.

She wondered why the bus passed through these few blocks; no one who lived around here would ever need to take a bus. Nobody ever got on at the stops in the Neighborhood, and no one ever got off. And she noticed that people never talked about the Neighborhood, even when she asked them about it. It was as if they knew not to. Who lives here, she wondered? Rich people, obviously; workers like her couldn't afford such houses. They were not mansions, there were few real mansions in this part of the world and none in the city, but they were still big, and expensive. But most rich people in the city lived in penthouses or sometimes in the painted Victorians on the avenues. Who lived in these secretive homes hidden on these tiny streets in this hilly hollow?

This question became even more pressing the day she noticed there were no people there. She'd never once seen anyone on the streets of the Neighborhood, or anyone standing in a doorway, or anyone moving behind a window of any of the houses. It seemed to a bluenette girl that whoever lived in the Neighborhood did not deign to leave their homes, or maybe it was just that they simply never left their homes during the day. Since she took a different bus home, a bluenette girl never passed through the Neighborhood at night. She became glad of that. It seemed whoever lived here didn't want to be seen by outsiders.

One day a boy at WBBA took a vacation. Ryo asked his assistant if she wanted to fill in for him during the morning. Tips were supposed to be better in the morning, so the bluenette girl agreed to switch her day and night shifts at WBBA. This meant, of course, that her bus route would be reversed, but that did not occur to her until it was too late. That first day she took her night bus in the morning, the streets looked so different with the sun up, so alive, worked her night job during the day, took her afternoon bus the opposite direction, she could not shake the feeling she was traveling backwards in time, somehow, and, finally, caught her morning bus at night. The dark streets of the Neighborhood, with all the long, clinging willow vines fluttering in the evening breeze, lurked ahead of her, and a bluenette girl realized that she had been dreading this all day.

She chided herself; there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just a street. But look at the faces of the other people on the bus: Yes, they were all afraid, though none of them would admit it. One woman, she saw, was even holding her breath. They crossed Sloat Boulevard and the first of the quiet houses. A bluenette girl avoided looking out the windows. She realized her heart was pounding and she had to force herself to breathe. The steady hum of the bus tires comforted her a little; it took less than a minute to cut through the Neighborhood. They'd be safe soon.

She found herself turning toward the window. She did not want to, but it was like an itch; the harder she tried not to scratch, the worse it got. She could not help but turn. Was it her imagination, or was the woman sitting across the aisle trying to warn her with sideways glances and half-hidden gestures not to look? She could not be sure. Heart pounding, she turned all the way and she looked into the darkness. She saw…

Nothing. Nothing except the same streets and the same houses as always, the same leaning trees and the same showy fountain. There was nothing strange or sinister about it after all, and she laughed at herself. How childish her fears had been. It was just a neighborhood for rich snobs who liked their privacy and were probably annoyed by the loud, smelly city bus that drove down their private little avenue a hundred times a day both ways.

In fact, now that she was not so afraid, she realized that it was really a pleasant looking little neighborhood. It was inviting. Only half aware of what she was doing, a bluenette girl rang the bell. Several people in nearby seats jumped; no one ever, ever rang the bell for a stop in the Neighborhood. But a bluenette girl just had. The driver glanced at her and then looked away. The caramel haired blader across the aisle was now, very clearly, looking at a bluenette girl, and she saw his shake his head a fraction of a degree, but she ignored him. Her feet seemed to move of their own accord, one in front of the other, down the short aisle and into the stairwell where the automatic door hissed open, and then she was outside the protective shell of the vehicle and setting foot, for the first time in her life, on the streets of the Neighborhood.

The caramel haired boy who'd tried to warn her stared down from a window, his face bleached and his eyes wide, but then the snap of the automatic door and the hum of the tires whisked him away, and a bluenette girl was alone. It was a warm night. There was no moon. A small breeze was, as always, coming from the direction of the ocean. The stirring of the willows was the only noise. a bluenette girl looked around; something was strange. The streets were deserted, as usual, but there was something about the houses. She realized there were no lights on in any of them. Every window was dark. The breeze turned cold and a bluenette girl rubbed her bare arms. She now felt foolish for getting off the bus and making herself late. She did not understand why she'd done it. And the old fear was creeping up in her again now as all those dark windows, like the empty eye sockets in a pile of skulls, stared at her.

She did not want to wait here for the next bus, so she started to walk. The top of the hill would be better, she reasoned. Safer. She tried to keep her eyes on his feet, but again she found she couldn't help glancing from side to side. She prayed for a sign of life anywhere, something to reassure her, but it was all darkness and silence. Nothing here looks lived-in, she thought, realizing that had been the disquieting quality of the Neighborhood all along. It was less like a real neighborhood as much like a museum display of how a neighborhood might look. No one who saw these streets for even a second would mistake them for the habitat of any living thing. This she had always known, deep down, even if she only just now knew how to articulate it.

She walked faster. It seemed to a bluenette girl that the hill was steeper than usual, all rich neighborhoods in the city were built on hills. Was the grade becoming more severe so as to slow her down? Absurd, she thought. Then the wind changed direction, blowing in her face hard enough to make her take a half step backward, like a hand trying to hold her in one place. The houses crouched on their lots, waiting for her. The windows were dark, the doors were closed, the—

She stopped. One door was open, on the little cream-colored house with the tile roof. It was wide open, in fact, revealing a dark hallway beyond. A bluenette girl looked around; still no one in sight. Why should this door be open in the middle of the night, she wondered? It did not look like anyone was home. A house like this should be locked at night; perhaps there'd been a robbery? Perhaps someone was hurt? Perhaps…

She was walking toward the door. She did not want to and she had not thought about doing it, just as she hadn't really thought about getting off the bus, but still, she was walking toward the door. The toe of her black high heels tapped the stone porch steps on her way up. Why am I doing this, she thought? But it was already too late; the door was open and she was inside. The house closed up around her.

A bluenette girl stood in the foyer. Though dark, there seemed to be nothing strange about the house. It was clean and furnished. There was a faint, underlying scent of mustiness but there was also a perceptible effort to cover it up. Everything was neatly in its place. Yes, it looked normal enough, she thought.

But it didn't look lived-in…

A flicker of movement caught a bluenette girl's purple eye. She saw that the front door had closed. Not all the way, just halfway, gliding on hinges so quiet it would seem they scarcely moved at all. It was enough to jolt a bluenette girl out of her reverie; I should not be here, she thought, and she went for the door, but something moved again. Not the door but something just outside it. There was a flicker and a shudder and a bluenette girl swore she saw something pale flop against the door frame. Surely that was not an arm? Surely flesh could not be such a color? Surely it was the dark and a bluenette girl's imagination that made it appear that a barely glimpsed, quasi-human figure with flesh like an earthworm crouched on the porch, shuddering and gibbering?

But then it was gone.

A bluenette girl backed away. She wanted to get out, but not that way. She noticed, now, that there was light in this house after all, the bare illumination of a candle flame in a nearby doorway. Instinctively she went toward it, wanting to huddle around the light for protection against whatever was in the dark. She pushed on the half-closed door and there was indeed a single candle flickering on a table. Four figures sat around it, four people in claw-footed chairs, four men and women whose heads turned in unison toward a bluenette girl and smiled as their yellowing eyes met hers. But a bluenette girl was not looking at the people around the table. No, she was looking at what was on the table, next to the candle. She was, she realized, trying to scream. No sound came out.

"We have a guest," one of the men said. His voice was neither high nor low, neither young nor old; it was a blank voice. "We were not expecting you. I'm afraid you've already missed dinner."

The bluenette girl could not move. She tried to run, but her legs were frozen. She continued to stare at the table. The man who had spoken balled up a red napkin and tossed it onto the tablecloth. "At least we can offer you the hospitality of our company. Why don't you sit and tell us a little about yourself. What's your name?" The man still smiled. His face was the color of chalk. A bluenette girl realized they expected her to speak but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.

"What's the matter with you? Can't you talk? Or are you one of those…unfortunates?" The man's bloodless lips sneered.

"Look at her clothes," one of the women said. "She looks like some common rabble off the streets. Probably came off of that bus."

"Do you think so?" The man peered at her. The two silent figures nodded in agreement with the woman. "Well, then since we've already eaten and since she cannot speak and since she is not the right sort of person, I suppose we have no choice but to throw her out."

A bluenette girl felt a hand on her shoulder. No, she realized, not a hand, just something cold and clammy that might be called a hand if you knew no better word for it. She felt something at her back, a shape that shuddered and shook. The man with the pale face smiled at whatever was behind the worker. "Just in time. Please show this person to the door."

The clammy hand squeezed a bluenette girl's shoulder. She did not want to turn around. Awful as what she was seeing was, she was sure that whatever was behind her would be worse. But whatever irresistible force first compelled her to get off the bus and then compelled her to enter this house, the same force, she was now certain, that lured any number of people into these homes each year, never to be seen again, this house was now telling her to turn around and look at her escort. So she did.

And then, mercifully, came unconsciousness.

In a way, nothing changed for a bluenette girl after that. She still got up at the same time each day, still went to her same job, still took the same busses and, yes, still passed through the Neighborhood each morning. She thought she would be afraid to, but she soon realized that the Neighborhood was not the same creature during the day as it was during the night. There was really nothing to fear in the Neighborhood by day.

Yes, in one sense nothing changed, but in a more important sense things were never quite the same again. A bluenette girl always thought she knew the city the way like she would have known a brother if she'd ever had one. But now the city seemed dark and alien, and she began to suspect she did not know it at all. Worse, she began to think she did not even want to.

It was not the people at the table who haunted his dreams, not their bloodless faces, or their long fangs behind sneering gray lips. Nor was it the shapeless, gibbering thing they called a servant. No, what haunted a bluenette girl was the memory of that bloodstained napkin on the table, and the remains of the nightly meal spread out on the red-dappled tablecloth. "We've already eaten," the pale man had said. Whenever a bluenette girl closed her eyes she glimpsed what lay on that table, and she remembered what was left of its face. And a bluenette girl knew that if she had come to that house an hour or perhaps even fifteen minutes earlier they would never have simply thrown her out, never have just laughed at her and let her go.

And now she understood why the Neighborhood was empty by daylight, and why it never looked lived-in. Because certainly the things that inhabited those houses could not be called alive, and they could not abide the light of the sun. But the city belonged to them, and they were its true inhabitants in a way that a bluenette girl never could be. In all likelihood, they had been here since it was founded. And would stay here forever.

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 **So, What did you guys think? If you like this chapter, please review.**


	2. She Is Coming To Get You

It was, as it happened, a dark and stormy night. the bluenette girl could hear the rain, even, as she was, trapped in a cold box under the ground, smothered by the weight of the earth. She was tired, but she felt a potency in her limbs and a sudden, unexplainable sense of urgency that allowed her to press the lid open and drag her aching bones up through the dirt and out into the fresh air and the black night and the world of the living again. A bluenette girl looked the grave and she knew where she was: the city.

No, not quite, she corrected herself. She was in the town ten miles south of the city. They buried no bodies in the city itself. A hundred years ago the city passed a law against any new burial sites and they even moved the ones they had, evicting the dead, and this town sprouted like a mushroom on the city's southern border to hold all those dear departed who no longer had a place in the city itself. It was a town of cemeteries and mortuaries, a town of coffin makers and embalmers, a town of mausoleums and headstones, where the city's dead migrated for their eternal rest. A town with a thousand occupied graves for every one occupied house. The north became the city of the living; the south became the city of the dead.

For the most part the two kept to their respective cities and existed in peace. But tonight the city in the south was sending an emissary. And her mission was to increase the population of the dead city by one. There was someone in the living city who did not deserve to be there. A bluenette girl sensed her target and knew, instinctively, who it was: A greenette blader. A bluenette girl remembered everything about A greenette blader: his voice, his face, even the way he looked her in his blue eyes. Death could not rob him of this knowledge. She would find him.

Tentatively, A bluenette tried to walk. Her legs were stiff and tired after so many years in the grave. The cold rain felt good on her face. One step at a time A bluenette learned to walk again and when she was ready she walked down the hill, away from her headstone, through the little cemetery gate and out onto the highway. Yes, this road she remembered. She could follow it north the whole way. The dark night and the rain would hide A bluenette girl's face from what few drivers and pedestrians there were.

As she walked she tried to make sense of things. She remembered dying in a far-off city in another state. Her mother must have had her body shipped back and buried here, close to home, close to the city she grew up in. Were her mother alive now? Should she look for them? No, she decided; best that they not see her like this. Best that they never know. A bluenette girl understood that a greenette was both alive and nearby. That was enough to worry about for now. She would have business with no other living person.

A bluenette had left her own cemetery behind but others dotted the roadside. If she strained her ears she could hear them, the dead men and dead women down in their graves. Most of them snored away an eternal slumber, occasionally shifting to a more comfortable position in their coffins. Some of the restless ones muttered to themselves, or even had smothered conversations with those buried nearest them. A few talked about coming up, like she had, but no one else seemed ready to do it tonight. She suspected they often talked about such things without actually doing them.

A bluenette girl did wonder, though, whether she shouldn't pause for a conversation with a few. Why, right over there Joe DiMaggio was buried. Imagine the talk they two could have. And over there was Wyatt Earp's grave, and over there was Turk Murphy, and Vince Guaraldi. Doc Barker had been buried out here somewhere too, after she died trying to escape from Alcatraz. Lily Coit, Charles De Young, even Emperor Norton himself, they were all here, and surely they wouldn't mind trading a few words with a bluenette girl? Surely they were just as lonely as she was…

But she had no time. Revenge was too precious, and had been too long coming already. So a bluenette girl slogged on, through the rain, past the graves, toward the city lights reflecting off those great shining glass towers like lighthouses for the fates. A bluenette girl had always loved those great buildings. They made her feel young again.

Something appeared then, a long, snaky, blazing apparition screaming its banshee wail into the night as it flew through the air. A bluenette girl fell, panicked, terrified, scrambling for a hiding place while the impossible thing slowed and then seemed to hover overhead. She clung to a concrete column, praying it did not see her. She tried to hold his breath only to realize it was now not only impossible but unnecessary. There was a snapping sound, and then a ball rang, and then, strangely, the sound of feet tromping overhead, like a column of soldiers marching on thin air. She dared look up and then realized what the glowing specter really was: an elevated train. The column she hugged supported the tracks. Late-night commuters filed onto the platform twenty feet overhead and when the doors slid shut again the entire shrieking assemblage streamed off into the night.

A bluenette girl felt foolish. Clearly things had changed in the years since her mother died. Once her embarrassment wore off, she realized the rail-line was a boon for her; it would lead into the city, and if she followed underneath it she would encounter fewer late-night pedestrians than on the main highway. Staying close to the lights on the tracks she followed them, into the heart of civilization, and closer to her prey.

The pouring rain made rivers and streams of everything. She was glad that it seemed to be relieving her of the grave smell. The city by night was a strange thing: dark and vacant but still teeming with artificial animation, with the glare of electronic lights and the low whine of tires on asphalt. She did not belong here; the people of A bluenette girl kept in their place. It was the unspoken law of the dead. But tonight the rules bent. A bluenette girl scampered beneath overpasses, through alleys, along ditches and across vacant lots. Those few people who saw her took her for another homeless vagrant in his shapeless, foul-smelling clothes. The heavy rain hid face from them. She was tracking using senses she did not realize she had. Maybe it was the spirit of revenge itself that guided her. She came to one block, one street, one house. It was one of the tall warehouse. Yes, this was the sort of warehouse a greenette blader would live in. A greenette blader was a wild and fearsomely strong lion blader, so powerful that he was never punished even though everyone knew he'd battled A bluenette twice.

A bluenette girl crept up to a window streaked with rain and squinted into the soft yellow lamplight inside. The living room was filled with boxes, and the floor lined with newspapers that suggested painting project. Of course, a bluenette girl thought, that explains why I've come back tonight: that guy has only just come to live here in the city. A bluenette girl smeared the glass with her mocha fingers, rage welling up in the hollow of her chest where her heart once sat. There was movement in another room. She clamored over a fence and into a side yard, creeping up to a bedroom window. Yes, there she was! A bluenette girl felt poisonous joy at the sight of her enemy.

A greenette blader picked through the rooms of new warehouse, feeling the stacks of boxes with his hands. But how weird he was! He'd become gray and bent in the years since a bluenette girl last saw him. And what was this? A greenette blader's hands moved over everything with such delicate care. It's blinding, a bluenette girl realized, blind and all but helpless. But why the lamps? Then a bluenette girl spotted the tire tracks in the wet driveway. Someone else lived here too. A caretaker, or a friend? Whoever it was, they surely wouldn't leave that guy alone for long. a bluenette girl wanted to break through the glass and seize a greenette blader, to break his bones and twist his limbs. His body was tired and clumsy but strong, terrifyingly strong.

But no, she had a better idea: She'd get a greenette blader to open the door for her. Yes, open the door and invite her in, never realizing that she was bringing doom into the place. A bluenette girl went to the front door and knocked as loudly as she could. The door opened, just a crack, and a voice said:

"Who is this?"

For a moment a bluenette girl could recognise that voice, but when she opened her mouth the words came, though they sounded strange. "Kyoya." a bluenette girl said in her clear voice, "Thank god. The rain has wet me to the bone. If you don't mind, I'd like permission to rest a while here on your porch, and hopefully dry out a bit."

The slim yellow line that indicated the door opening wavered for a second, as if the warehouse itself were pondering. Then the door opened and Kyoya beckoned her in. "Can't have you freezing out there. Come on in and dry yourself off properly."

The basement was warm. A bluenette girl felt the change in temperature vaguely, as if it were happening to someone else and she was only observing it. "I have not moved in yet." Kyoya said.

"The first night in a new house is always the loneliest," a bluenette girl, following Kyoya deeper inside. She walked slowly, the other to find her way. Even Kyoya walked faster than a bluenette girl did.

"Tell me about it," Kyoya said. "But when you get to be my age, any night can be a lonely one. I find I'm loneliest of all when someone is with me which I don't team up with anyone."

"It's the same with me," a bluenette girl said. She dripped rainwater on the hardwood floor, water black and green with the residue of her body. The rain, she knew, would cover the smell of her moldered flesh even to the her sensitive nose, but not for very long. That was all right. She would not need long. a bluenette girl could hear footsteps, a sound approached near the door, she cocked her head to one side. Kyoya put a finger to his lips as a signal: Shhhhh. A sound stopped.

A bluenette girl sighed softly. Kyoya leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "What are you doing here?" a bluenette said.

Kyoya told her about what happened.

A bluenette girl was quiet for a moment. Then she said: "So, a blackout town called Thirteen and a poor little girl named Carol."

Kyoya closed his eyes.

He began to shake. A Bluenette girl stood over him, dripping rain. It was a long time before Kyoya spoke. When he did the only words he said were: "You're next, Hikaru."

"What did you say?" Hikaru asked.

"She's coming for you." Kyoya said, and Hikaru started to panic. She screamed:

"You're kidding! No one is coming, you bastard!"

"No, I'm serious! Quit joking around!" Hikaru said.

"Maybe, I am not kidding," Kyoya said as walked towards her. "Because She had never terrorise anyone. But I'll understand soon."

"But I had to do it," said Hikaru. "Don't you see? It had to be done to resist."

Kyoya opened his eyes, the eyes are pure black. "Answer a question," Kyoya said slowly, "and I may let you live."

Hikaru's wide eyes looked at him.

"How many?" Kyoya said slowly in a low tone as he walked closer to Hikaru.

"How many what?"

Kyoya wrapped his fingers around Hikaru's throat. "How many people did she kill?" Outside, the rain was loud, like a thousand wet, clammy hands beating on the walls and windows. "Do you even know how many there were? Tell me that our lives meant at least that much to you, and I may let you go."

Hikaru blinked. She furrowed her brow. She stammered: "I…I…"

And she started to fade.

Slowly, very slowly, Kyoya reached for the lamp. He turned out the light. In the dark, there was a sound like the last bit of water swirling around the drain. And then she passed out.

And then everything went quiet.

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 **If you like Chapter 2, please review.**


	3. They killed Gerald Cohen's daughter

**Hi, it's me again. I was too busy watching the Simpsons. But I can continue this story. OK, here comes Chapter 3.**

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Hikaru woke up with a gasp.

She sat up and looked around the bedroom and she sighed. Hikaru didn't have to worry about keeping herself alive. By the time they came to her, they were already dead. Her job was just to find out why.

She was good at it. Every fresh cadaver had secrets; by remembering, she discovered them. And she knew as much about her past. She knew hearts, how they get together, how they loved, and most importantly, how they could be hurt and heartbroken. Hikaru would say that she understood her heart. In a certain sense, she was right.

Hikaru tried to not think of it, but it haunts her. She have heard story about this place and a little girl, about all those who go are never the same. There a few words about it, mainly of how much of a terrible place it is. She heard of one story where a girl went in there for only 5 minutes and saw all sorts of abysmal things. Of Men who linger there, still, for hours, sitting patiently and looking for easy prey and of images that are so nerve-wracking, so perverse and so grotesque that all who see them cannot forget them. And even stories of people who go there and instantly become addicted.

A silver haired blader stood against the wall. She thought I bet he have pure black eyes like Kyoya had. Hikaru stood up and walked slowly towards him, the room is dark, old and abandoned. She put her hand on a silver haired blader's shoulder. He turned his head to her. Hikaru saw his yellow eyes. It was... Tsubasa. Thank god, He doesn't have pure black eyes.

In a way, they were alone together. Anyone else who walked in would see only two people in the room. But Hikaru saw a third, another girl, a girl named Sierra, who stood in the corner and watched. This boy named Lightning, who would sometimes respond to Hikaru's questions by nodding or shaking her head. Other than that, she did not do much besides watch.

The motel room, which Sierra had paid for in cash four hours earlier, was on the third floor of a dangerous-looking rattrap squeezed alongside nicer buildings. The carpets were filthy, the walls dotted with graffiti, and the rooms had no windows. The black and white television in each room played only two local affiliates, pornographic films, and static. It was a good place to stay if you liked the idea of being murdered without anyone noticing.

She'd picked it because it was the kind of place where no one asked questions, even if you came in out of a cab with an unconscious middle-aged man slung over your shoulders in the middle of the night. All they cared about here was taking the money and minding their own business.

Lightning was secured to the bed frame by four pairs of novelty handcuffs that he'd bought in a sex shop on Folsom Street, where he went so that he'd run the lowest odds of running into anyone he knew. Tsubasa waited for her to wake up. It took a long time. Flunitrazepam, he knew, could last up to twelve hours, but he was the partner type. Partner was a good quality in a blader. When Hikaru took the first unsteady steps back into consciousness she sat down next to Sierra. The stained mattress was thin and the bad springs creaked under her weight.

What was Kyoya talking about? And why is he warning me? Hikaru thought.

She would be confused and prone to panic, and she didn't want that. She looked at the little girl, who stood in the corner, watching without blinking. "Are you sure this is the best way?" Hikaru said. The little girl nodded.

Whispering, Tsubasa explained where she was and what had happened to her. He warned her that the restraints he'd used probably wouldn't hurt her but she still shouldn't struggle. And he assured her that he did not plan to kill her.

"You have to trust me," Tsubasa said. "I'm here to help you."

The little girl, for the most part, kept her head. She licked her lips and when Hikaru saw they were dry she gave her a sip from a bottle of water. The first thing he asked was, "Why are you waking up?" She told him what Kyoya said before. He had heard of her. Some of his partners were two children; one of them was struggling with feelings of guilt over his constant infidelity and as part of an exercise Tsubasa had asked them to list all the children in his life he felt uncontrollably attracted to.

Sierra's name was the first he came up with. Lightning told her all of this in one long run-on sentence, babbling and obviously not sure what he was saying by the end of it. He was not yet fully sober. He did not, she noticed, ask him what she planned to do next. Perhaps he knew better. Or perhaps he was too afraid.

Hikaru took a sip of water to wet her own lips and then said, "Tell me about another one of the family. Do you remember Carol?"

Lightning blinked, brow furrowed. And then he laughed, too loudly. Tsubasa shook his head.

"Maybe you'll remember her if I show you a picture." Tsubasa took a folded photograph out of his bag. The only light in the room was the grainy, unreal blur of TV static, and Hikaru was still be dizzy from the drugging, so he had to hold it in front of her face for a long time before she made the soft little "Oh!" sound that indicated recognition. "You mean Carol's family," she said.

Tsubasa looked at the other guy in the room, the one who Hikaru couldn't see even though he was right in front of her. The other guy nodded. So he uncovered the bed sheets. She gasped in a shock. The man was lying on the bed dead, he looks pale, cold and breathless. "Her father's name," Tsubasa said, as Hikaru winced from the split lip he'd just given her "was Gerald. They killed him."

"What? No!" Hikaru stood up and stepped back quickly, and the restraints rattled against the cheap aluminum bed frame. "First of all, you have it all wrong. Second, that was years ago. Third… third…" She paused, unable to focus for a moment, muttering nonsense before her train of thought reconnected. "Third, how do you even, I mean, what's it to you?"

Tsubasa unfolded the photograph. There was another woman in it, with her head on Gerald's shoulder, smiling. It was his wife.

"They lived in posh house," Sierra said. "Well, Carol's father was in medical school. He only said he was. That turned out to be… not a lie, exactly. More like a misunderstanding. Like a lot of things about him and us. Including his name. I guess you think the name Gerald is funny? It wasn't to me. I loved that name. She loved her father." She took the photo and put it in her pocket "Until they took him away from her. That poor thing."

Hikaru didn't say anything for a while. Tsubasa was quiet as well. In the room next door, someone was making a lot of noise. Hikaru seemed to be preparing her next words very carefully.

"I realize that these are strange circumstances," Lightning said. "But as a medical professional you should already understand what's happened here. The old man in that photograph was—is—named Gerald Cohen. He suffered from a rare psychiatric disorder, a disassociative identity. 'Gerald' was the name of an alter ego his subconscious invented. There was no way you could have known this when the all of her family get together.

"Gerald came to me because he said he was suffering from depression. He was wholly ignorant of his real problem, and it was two years before even I began to suspect it. Real disassociative personalities are very rare. In Gerald's case the psychosis emerged gradually; people invent alter egos and fantasy lives for themselves all the time. In Gerald's case it manifested itself in the most extreme way possible. I spent nine years treating him, restoring him to a single functioning identity with—"

"I've already read his essays in the journals, Lightning," Hikaru said. "They've done very well for themselves with the story of how they helped Carol. But they never gave a thought to girl they got rid of. Gerald was not an alter ego to me, not just part of her wife. Even after he left her, she still loved him. I spent years trying to find her again after battle bladers. And when I finally did, I discovered that she had no idea who I was. She didn't remember a thing about me. Because the little girl I knew was gone."

Lightning marched to Hikaru. Next door, it sounded like someone was hitting the wall over and over again. "Listen to me. I knew that his wife had romantic partners under her alternate persona. Part of the treatment was reconciling her primary personality with the actions and relationships of her alternate one. If I'd had any idea that between her and Gerald… that is to say, if we'd known—"

"I know," Tsubasa said, nodding. "You did what any responsible blader would do. That's why I'm not going to kill you." Hikaru and Sierra looked relieved, although she had told him so once already. "Still, this man took something away from his daughter. You think he made Gerald whole, but what this man really did was cut him apart. He picked one half of him and he cut the other half off and threw it away. So it's only fair that I take something from this man too."

"What do you call that in the line of work? Reconciling the schism?" Lightning spat questionably.

"Now wait a minute," Hikaru said, raising her voice.

"Do you think much about dying? I do. I'm told that most people in my field rarely do. Makes it easier not to internalize your work. But I think about it all the time." Lightning was saying something, but she talked over him. "Sometimes I think about the soul. I didn't think there even was such a thing until recently. I've been cutting people apart my whole life and I've never once found anything that looked like a soul anywhere in them. But now I think there really is such a thing. And I think that even people who aren't real can have souls. Even someone who didn't exist can be a ghost. That's what I think. What do you think?"

Lightning didn't seem to know how to answer, but she hadn't really been talking to him anyway. From the corner, Hikaru watched. When Tsubasa looked at her, she nodded. Tsubasa turned the television from static to another channel and put the volume all the way up. Human voices through tinny speakers at full blast sounded like shrieking, wordless ghosts. Lightning ducked down, getting something from under the bed. He heard the man moving, trying to see what she was doing. When he stood up the man started to scream; not words, just screaming. Hikaru and Tsubasa stepped back and making a way out.

"I'm pretty sure I can do this without killing him," Lightning said. "You know the old joke about being a cutter, right? 'I've never lost a patient yet.'" He pointed to his legs. "So, do you want me to cut above the knees, or below?"

The pale man was beyond answering now; he was just screaming. Lightning hoped that his commotion would not throw him off when he made the first incisions. He was noted in Hikaru's field for his steady hands. But then again, he thought, as he pulled the chord on the chainsaw and felt it come to sputtering, grinding life in his hands, this was not exactly his normal precision tool.

"Don't worry," he said, pausing with the whirring saw blade just above the man's legs. "It's gonna be over soon enough."

From the corner, Sierra smiled as Hikaru and Tsubasa left the room.

Hikaru and Tsubasa walked outside the town.

She hoped that Lightning will go easy on the pale man, because he not going to kill him.

"I don't understand why Kyoya tells me... and how does he know about Carol?" Hikaru asked to Tsubasa. She is a bit confused.

"It's because of the demon who possessed her. As you can see, the day of reckoning is here. I don't know why but we'll find information about the past of Carol." Tsubasa said.

"If he says he knows the truth about who she is... then like it or not I have to believe him." Hikaru smiled.

The only way to get her secrets to her past, is discover the life and death of Carol Cohen.

* * *

 **Up next: Chapter 4 So, if you like Chapter 3, please review. Thanks.**


	4. I Tried To Warn You

**Hi guys! I'm back from school. Let's move on to Chapter 4.**

* * *

After Hikaru and Tsubasa made their way to the underground station, they got into the train.

That voice was really starting to get to the driver.

"We will depart shortly. Please wait."

They'd been hearing that for twenty minutes now. The train was stalled two miles into the Transbay Tube. It wouldn't budge an inch, but Tsubasa thought that everything ought to be working, so it must be a problem with the tracks. He'd called it in, then assured Hikaru everything was all right, and then waited. It wouldn't be so bad if the PA didn't seem to be on the fritz as well. Every few minutes she's disembodied, mechanical voice chimed:

"We will depart shortly. Please wait."

She couldn't turn it off. She didn't remember ever hearing that announcement before; but then, she'd never had a breakdown like this before either. The train hummed on its electric rails, sealed up inside a steel tube submerged 130 feet below the surface of the bay. Her ears were stopped up from the pressure the water above them. Up ahead, all Hikaru could see was darkness, the occasional lighting fixtures doing nothing except demonstrating precisely how pitch black it really was down here. They'd made this trip six times a night every night for seven years, back and forth across 30 miles of track between SFO and Bay Point, which meant back and forth through the underwater tunnel six times, and never before had she stopped to consider the crushing weight of all that water. She thought she could hear bolts straining and water dripping somewhere. Just her imagination, of course, but still…

"We will depart shortly. Please wait."

Tsubasa toggled the PA switch gain; it hadn't done anything the last five times, but she could help trying once more. He checked the security monitors; Hikaru seemed calm enough, considering the circumstances. The four-car train held only seven people as they came up on one o'clock in the morning. Two were dozing and one was pacing the aisle. All but one had white earbuds snaking into the sides of their heads, and they would nod now and then to whatever they were hearing. She envied her rider's calm. If it just weren't so dark out there she might not be so frazzled. The tunnel looked like it went on forever. And if they had stopped anywhere but under the water. And if that damn voice would just knock it off…

"We will depart shortly.

"No one can hear me but you.

"Please wait."

Hikaru blinked. "What was that?" She toggled the switch again, but of course, nothing happened. Up ahead one of the lights winked out. Or was that her imagination again? She fanned herself with her clipboard; the stalled train seemed hot and stuffy all of a sudden. The air conditioning was still on, according to her diagnostic panel. Perhaps it was just the confinement wearing on her. Would dispatch ever tell her. "What was going on?" Hikaru turned to Tsubasa, but he had completely gone. "Tsubasa?" She thumbed the call button again.

"Any word on that track problem?" she blurted it out, not even bothering to identify herself first. The only answer was static. She frowned and hung up. She began to sweat, and she pinched the ridge of her nose, eyes squeezed shut. A headache was coming on.

"We will depart shortly, please wait" the automated voice whirred. Then: "They're already inside. Look at the riders."

Her violet eyes snapped open. "What did it say?" She looked up and did a double take. She grabbed a Windex-soaked rag and rubbed the monitor screens, but nothing changed. Something must be wrong with the cameras? Cars three and four looked fine, but in car two both of the sleeping passengers looked like indistinct, grey blurs. In car one (the same car she occupied, in the driver's carriage up front) the pacing man looked perfectly normal, but the woman in the backseat with the earbuds in also appeared blurry and distorted, as if a film of cobweb or a tiny fog bank covered her body. Hikaru looked over her shoulder, peering into the car through the plastic divider; she was standing there, staring at the blank tunnel wall outside her window, nodding her head to whatever was streaming through the wires in her ears. She looked perfectly fine. Hikaru chuckled a little at having scared herself, then rubbed her temples. The annoying recorded voice pinged again:

"We will depart shortly—

"No we won't. We won't leave until what's keeping us here lets us go. You are not watching the riders."

This time Hikaru was sure of what she'd heard. "What the hell?" She reached for the toggle.

"You can't turn me off. No one can hear me but you."

A tingling sensation crept across the back of her neck. Her hand froze halfway on the switch. Her fingers trembled.

"Look at the riders again," the voice said. She hesitated. "Look!"

When Hikaru looked she squinted and then leaned in, as if being closer would somehow change what was there. Two more of her passengers had lost definition on the video feed, leaving only two still showing up clear. She tapped the screens. "What the hell is going on here?" The sight of those blurry figures gave her chills, for some reason. Their images seemed to wriggle and writhe, as if a cloud of tiny insects were crawling over them.

The two sleeping passengers woke and, walking in unison, moved up to the first car. She expected to be able to see them clearly once they'd moved, but the grainy blur stuck to them as they moved. She looked over her shoulder again; both of them were in her car now. One was a teenager, short and fat, the other an old man, gray and thin. They sat side by side in the front seats, though they'd been separate before. The pacer didn't seem to pay them any mind, but he did finally sit down. Hikaru watched as he fitted in white earbuds.

"It's spreading. They're inside. You have to get out of here," the train's voice buzzed at her.

"Shut up," Hikaru mumbled. She looked at the monitors again: More passengers had moved up; four were in the second car now. They all sat rigid in their seats, and they all faced forward. None of them spoke. She called dispatch again, but this time there was not even static, just dead air. Outside, the tube lights were turning out one by one, and the train's lights were flickering too.

"Help won't come in time," said the train. The PA warbled' it was losing power as well. "You have to run. They're in the wires."

Now everyone was crowded into the lead car. All seven riders sat side by side in the front-most seats, staring at her. Their unblinking eyes looked flat and painted-on in the flickering florescent lights. She tapped on the plastic divider. "Everyone," she said, working hard to stop her voice from trembling, "they'll be here to help us any moment. If you could all just head back to your original seats. We shouldn't crowd the lead car in case… in case of an emergency."

No one answered. No one moved. The man nearest her removed his earbuds and looked at her. Her CCTV monitors were failing one by on. The faithful voice of the PA buzzed in her compartment, barely audible as the train's electrical systems slowly died. "They're turning everything off," it said. "They're… sorr—… tried to warn… they're in the wires. They use the wires to…"

The seven passengers all stood up. Hikaru went to open the door to her compartment, then thought better of it and locked it instead. Only the emergency lights were on now, and the passengers were dark blue silhouettes in the gray electric haze.

"Everyone, just return to your seats. Return to your seats and… and…" Her mouth went dry.

"—oo late." The PA was overwhelmed by static. "—ired in…—just voices."

The static cleared for a moment:

"The dead are just voices, but we can travel through the wires, into machines, even into bodies, through the wires, through—"

Seven shapes crowded around the window. Hikaru tried to shrink back, but there was no room in the tiny compartment.

"The eight want new bodies. I told them not to do it but they wouldn't listen. I tried to warn you. I tried. I—"

The PA went dead. The consoles were all dark. Outside, the tunnel was a long black passage to nothing. Inside, only one light was working. Hikaru heard fleshy palms slapping against the divider. Someone was pulling on the door. The flimsy lock jiggled. The divider broke in half and fell in, and then hands were grabbing her, pullin her, dragging her out. They were cold hands. She was screaming now, but with two miles of empty tunnel on either side and 130 feet of water overhead there was no one to hear her. They held her down. "Let me go!" she said. She felt cold all over. She felt something that made her think of the icy belly of a snake slithering across her body. One of the passengers leaned in.

"It's okay," Tsubasa said. Cold breath tickled the Hikaru's ear. "It's okay," he repeated. "We're not going to hurt you."

"We just want a ride." Kyoya said in a normal voice.

"Kyoya? But... why?" Hikaru blinked, she is confused. She saw Kyoya's eyes are all pure black, but he has cool blue eyes now.

"tch, Never mind about me." Kyoya said as he crossed his arms.

"What about everyone in this train?" Hikaru asked.

"Don't worry. The people will remain seated and they're safe." Tsubasa replied.

Hikaru stood up and sighed. The red light made the peeping sound.

"Now what the fuck is going on?" Kyoya asked angrily and been annoyed.

"We almost here." Tsubasa said.

Hikaru opened her eyes.

* * *

 **Up next: Chapter 5. If you like this chapter, please review. Thanks.**


	5. I Am The Demon Of Darkness

**Hey! I'm home from school. I brought to you, Chapter 5.**

* * *

When Hikaru, Tsubasa and Kyoya found the way out of the underground station, they walked ahead to the old-fashioned theater.

It was opening night. For Hikaru, it was also closing night.

Carol's mother would still have a part in the chorus, of course. But tomorrow Gingka would come back and claim his rightful place as the lead and Madoka would go back to being, well, an mechanic. Learn the lines, watch the lead, perform your own small role, and wait, that was the game. Still, Tsubasa thought, at least she got one night in the spotlight.

Not that they could afford decent lights. They couldn't even afford a real stage, just an empty room with a performance space marked off. The house manager had added another row of seats in an act of delusional optimism (they could barely fill the ones they had) and now the chorus couldn't move without elbowing each other. And the costumes didn't really fit and there was no money to pay any of them and the heating in the old theater did not work anymore, leaving players and audience alike shivering even with as tightly packed in as they all were…

But people still showed up, and the show still went on, and even Hikaru couldn't help but watch while smiling a little when she saw the Xeroxed playbills: "Antigone," with the director's name right under it and Gingka's right under that and Madoka's own name (in much smaller print) toward the bottom. It was a good show, in spite of everything. A classic.

Gingka was the last cast member to leave. Everyone else had gone out to celebrate, but Kyoya found he wasn't in the mood. Madoka carefully folded and hung the bits of her costume in the single communal dressing room so that Hikaru would have nothing to complain about when she came back from whatever "emergency" called her away on opening night. Kyoya was waiting at the door and Hikaru thought he might be annoyed at the holdup, but then he smirked and whispered, "Let's get going. Tsubasa's here to see us." As if were the most amazing thing in the world.

Kyoya headed for the back door, but Hikaru added: "She talked to him her husband's death." He stopped. "Then, I won't leave until we meet him." There was a note of pleading, and beneath that a note of insistence. Hikaru wavered for a moment and then turned back toward the front. She tried not to notice Kyoya's smug, pleased expression as they did.

As advertised, Tsubasa was waiting in the lobby. But when he saw her he grinned in a way that made him look, for a second at least, tremendously appealing. He fanned himself with his playbill and pantomimed a swoon. "Antigone," he said, enjoying each syllable. Hikaru told him the real name of Carol's mother, but Kyoya waved it off. "Tonight, she's Antigone? That woman's finest Antigone I have ever seen. I first saw the play in 441, at the Dionysia in Athens, and she were a better Antigone tonight than I saw there, or anywhere since."

He gave her a non-committal look. Tsubasa sighed. "Can we walk out?" he said.

The correct answer, the safe answer, was no, because simply because he claimed to be a supporter (of no particular publication that he had mentioned, she noted) did not make it a good idea to wander off down the street with him in the middle of the night. And no was the sensible answer, because Hikaru had to rest after the premiere and because she felt a headache coming on. And she opened her mouth to say, "No, thanks," but, somehow, it came out as, "Yeah sure."

Kyoya groaned and smiled. "Fine by me then."

Kyoya digged down his pockets. Outside it was cold and the sky was that distinct shade of black that it only gets in December in the city. The uneven rows of tall buildings with their dark windows pushed higher and higher over them. Lights flashed here and there. Tsubasa began walking downhill and Hikaru (for some reason) went with him and Kyoya. Tsubasa was still talking about her performance. Kyoya scoffed, but feigned modesty. "She's only the understudy," he said. "Their real lead will be back playing the part tomorrow."

"No she won't," said Hikaru. "Evelyn will never play Antigone again, or any other part." She said it with such conviction that Kyoya was briefly speechless. She felt cold and afraid all of a sudden. Eager to change the subject, she said:

"You haven't told me her name."

"Marianne Cohen," Kyoya said. He kicked a bottle into the gutter.

"Like the Greek goddess?"

"Not like her. She is her."

They stopped walking; the street was deserted, though on the cross street below she saw the glare of headlights and bumper-to-bumper traffic. She gave him another sober look. "Are you alright?" she said.

"I'm fine."

"It's not a very good line. Anyway, Marianne told you about Gerald's death; I thought he was a nature god?"

"The god of the fields, and of the summits, and the streams and the forest. The god of the shepherds, and the flocks, and the leaves and the grass. The god of the beasts and the spirits and the great far wild places where Carol is afraid to go but feel compelled to journey anyway. The god of the shadows under the boughs of the trees and the secret places in the furrows of the earth."

Kyoya had been about to chuckle at Tsubasa, but when he was done speaking he found he couldn't.

"But," he said, smiling again, "also the god of theatrical criticism. So you see, She is a good mother. The first and the best."

"God of theatrical criticism? I've never heard that. What sense does that make?"

"Because in those days plays were dedicated to the Edward Cohen, and he was Carol's grandfather and favorite companion, so who better to judge which playwrights were worthy and which were not? And because before the Victorians built their theaters the first actors gathered on the slopes of the green hillsides where he spent my days, and they wore the skins of goats, and they would drink and dance and sing in divine ecstasy and pour libations in his honor, and I liked that very much, and blessed their revels."

Tsubasa was standing very, very close to him face to face. The long shadows of the winter night had not improved his unhandsome features, but he had a certain quality (perhaps his voice, perhaps his expressive features, or perhaps just what they call je ne se qua) that made him compelling to watch and be near. Kyoya even grabbed one collar of his brown jacket in his hand, and he did not object.

"But you don't believe he really is Gerald Cohen, do you, Tategami?"

"I don't know who was this old 'Gerald' man is! But you better stop this right now!" Kyoya yelled.

"Then I'll prove it to you."

"Really? How?"

"Come with me."

It was a stupid suggestion. Stupid, unsafe, illogical, insane. Anyone in their right mind would say no.

Hikaru said yes.

Tsubasa took her by the hand and drew her away with them; not in the direction they'd been going but down the side street, and then down an alley. It was pitch black but he knew his way. In the dark it seemed to Hikaru that his legs were twisted in some unearthly manner, making his gait long and wide. They encountered no one in the trash-strewn alley. The buildings they passed were just dark, blank shapes, black against black overhead. Hikaru felt drunk and addled, somehow. Her mind could not focus on any one thing, and the world swam in front of her eyes, as if a film covered everything. It seemed they were moving very fast. When he and Kyoya finally stopped, she was out of breath. He pulled her close and said, "We're here."

She looked around and gaped; she recognized this place. It was the grove. But that was clear on the other side of town, miles away? How could they get here on foot, and so quickly? The leaning trunks of those huge, primeval trees offered no answers. The man with the crooked legs led her down the crooked path as she wavered on her feet, dizzy and uncertain (crooked of mind, she thought). Tsubasa took her to the place with the stage. In the spring there was a music festival here every year. In the middle of winter it should be empty, but now torches lit everything with blazing orange light. Kyoya sat down and actually he crossed his arms as Hikaru sat down. She did not object.

"How are the two of you feeling now?" Tsubasa said. Kyoya's eyes blinked as he started to feel very strange. Hikaru groped for words and came up with:

"It's just like spring… when the world is mud…'" She was reciting something from memory, but she did not know what.

"I'm... feeling... I'm feeling good..." Kyoya and Hikaru laughed, then, uncontrollably. Her head throbbed. She felt as is she'd drunk a great deal of alcohol.

"That's good," said Tsubasa. "Now we're going to see a play. You showed me such sights on your little stage tonight that I thought I should return the favor. This play is called, 'The Cyclops.'"

"I know that one!" Hikaru blurted out. "By Euripides. It's a satyr play."

"Oh yeah, and here are the satyrs." Kyoya pointed to the stage with a gnarled finger and the understudy saw shapes converging there. They were men in costumes (at least, she thought they were costumes) of animal hide, with hooves that tromped the boards. They wore masks, but not masks like Hikaru had ever seen; though simple painted wood, these masks had faces no human mind could conceive. The chorus (for that's what the satyrs were) gathered at center stage and, at Tsubasa's signal, they began to dance. Not just dance, but cavort, and leap, and even writhe, wretched and mad, heads wagging and eyes rolling. Hikaru did not like the way that they moved; it was not natural. She particularly disliked the way that their legs bent. It hurt her eyes to look at them, but he did not let her look away.

"'It's spring, when the world is puddle-wonderful, the little lame balloon man whistles far and wee …'" he whispered to her. They were not the lines of the play, but lines from something else. Hikaru knew them but could not remember where they came from or why they seemed important just now. Onstage, the chorus finished their dance and then the chorus leader stepped forward. Kyoya knew the play's the opening lines:

"Unnumbered are the toils I bear, no less now than when I was young and hale…"

And the chorus joined him: "Here we have no gods, no roll of drums, or drops of sparkling wine. Dear friend Dionysus, where are you while we do service to the one-eyed cyclops, slaves and wanderers we?"

When Hikaru had seen "The Cyclops" before the satyrs had been funny, even when they complained, and the chorus leader had been old, fat Silenus, baldheaded and hapless. But these satyrs wept real tears and gnashed their sharp teeth and tore their hides with their twisted fingers, and Hikaru did not like to look at them, or to hear them. Their voices were hollow and full of pain. Pain, and anger.

"This is how the play was performed in the old days, before the theaters, before the Victorians, before Euripides gave it a name and wrote it on his scrolls and gave the parts to mere humans in masks," Tsubasa said, whispering in her ear. "But this is still not, yet, the greatest truth you will see. Watch."

The play went on: Odysseus and his crew washed up on shore and met the satyrs, and gave them wine, and laughed as the satyrs got drunk and rowdy. Hikaru would have thought the Victorians would not be as frightening as the satyrs, but their masks, though fully human, show faces line and creased with fret and grief, livid with anger and bitterness, or wan with utter despair. They were the faces of those who had suffered so much that they hated living. And though Hikaru saw the strings that held the masks in place and the empty holes where the actor's eyes peered out, it seemed, in the flickering torchlight, that the features the masks moved…

The satyrs were warning the Victorians that their master was coming, but Odysseus was not afraid. "For surely the ghosts of Troy will moan in their graves if we flee from a single man after standing with shields steady against the fifty sons of Priam," he said. "If we die here we will die a noble death, or, if we live, we will maintain our great renown."

And then there was a voice that made Hikaru scream and cover her ears. Even with ears covered, she heard the words boom like thunder:

"What means this idleness, your Dionysian revelry? Here have we no Dionysus, nor roll of drums. One of you will soon be shedding tears of blood from the weight of my club; look up, not down."

And now the trunks of the trees were shifting as if a huge wind were blowing them around, and now a great shape was stepping through, too huge for the whole of it to be seen in the light of the torches. The satyrs all scattered and the Victorians took up their spears, but most of them fell to their knees or clustered together, shaking and crying, as the cyclops loomed over them with its one huge eye and opened its great mouth to reveal rows of gore-spattered teeth. When it took a step the world shook and Hikaru screamed again and shut her eyes and the universe was spinning and mad, and Kyoya caught her in his arms. When she opened her eyes, the stage was empty; the men and the monsters were gone.

Dark Tsubasa whispered vile words in a language she did not know but still understood:

"Don't you like my play?"

He no longer seemed even normal human, he is calm, smart and polite. Now he was a dark, slithering, shapeless thing, twisting and reforming around her all the time. Hikaru blinked through tears. "What are you?" she said.

"I am the Demon of Darkness; my name means ALL, for the Hellenites knew that I was no simple god of the fields. I am the heaviest rocks at the bottom of the earth and the tallest peaks at the edge of the sky. I am the deepest roots of the oldest trees that will never die and the beating hearts of the great beasts that swallow eons in their jaws. I am the long hour between day and night when nothing is real. I am frenzy and madness and death. I am a world that doesn't care, that dashes your minds and bodies against the rocks and watches you break, and calls it good.

"And when they began to fear me they cut down my forests and plowed under my fields and cut my rocks into columns and roofs and statues. And when Thamus reached Pilodes he told them, 'The Demon of Darkness is dead,' but it was not true. You have paved me over and cut me down and tried to drown me in the poison from your machines, but I can never die. I have always been here. And now I will show you the future of your wretched race. Look."

He pointed to the stage again. Pale, wretched figures, hairless, eyeless things shimmered into view, things that twitched and writhed, blubbery skin rolling across their bones as they danced. Dark Tsubasa whispered more:

"What you are seeing is a piece called the Dance of the Nephilormus. They reenact the great battle that will take place on this spot, ten thousand years from now, between the human race and the nephil, which for them is ten thousand years in their past. Your kind will suffer and crawl the face of the earth and curse their enemies in that war, and they will call out to me to save them, but I will not. I will only do what I always do: endure."

Hikaru began to sob.

"Take... THE FUCK AWAY," Kyoya said, screaming. "SHE DOESN'T WANNA SEE THIS NEPHILS SHIT!"

"The nephils?" Dark Tsubasa laughed, and it hurt her ears. "These are not the nephil that you see. These are the humans!"

And he laughed manically while Hikaru wept, Kyoya screamed insanely and the vile dancers flopped their shapeless limbs across the stage, worshipping Dark Tsubasa with their suffering. And she wondered, is this real, is this happening, or is this a dream? Did I leave with the others and drink too much and now lie, sweating and afraid, in the back of someone's car? Or has my whole life up until now been a dream and this is finally the waking?

The dancing went on and on, and soon the whole world spun in a mad circle in front of her eyes, blurring into nothingness, and she was left with just the same words, repeating over and over again in her head:

"It's spring and

the

goat-footed

balloon Man

whistles

far and wee…"

* * *

 **Pretty scary. Right? Chapter 6 is Coming up. If you like this chapter, please review.**


	6. Marianne Cohen

**Hey! It's back! Let's move on the 6th and final chapter.**

* * *

Hikaru shot up with a scream that day, gasping and sweating, but alone in the bed. The clock's crimson face said 6:00 AM had passed, but not by much. Darkness enveloped her room, except where a vestigial nightlight illumined the corner by the desk; it wasn't much, but she felt better when she saw it.

"My husband told me he went off to become a frogman."

Gingka stopped eating, certain that he had misheard the old woman. They sat in B-pit, the beyblade work shop where Madoka repair beys. The old woman (her name was Marianne Cohen; she was in her sixties but looked much, much older) had a voice only slightly more pronounced than silence and Gingka could never be completely sure that what Madoka had written down was anything close to what the old woman had actually said.

"A frogman?" Gingka asked.

"That's what they used to call a deep-sea diver in the old days, on account of the flippers and the wetsuit. And the goggles." She patted Madoka's goggles over her hair. "He always said that's what he'd wanted to be when he grew up, so when he ran off that's what mother told me he was doing."

Madoka nodded and Gingka continued eating, without comment. The conversation was going on forty-five minutes and the frogman thing was the most coherent comment she'd gotten so far. She checked the time and found that the light would waning outside. She would have to hurry if she wanted to shoot the Ruins today. She skipped to her last question:

"I understand that he was an artist, but no one ever exhibited his work?"

"That's right," Marianne said. "In fact, here." The old woman stood; despite her sweet and delightful voice. She was medium-sized and thick-limbed. She reminded Tsubasa of a huge bird, a eagle or a crow. The old woman brought out a flat package a little over a foot on each side, wrapped in brown paper.

"You mentioned that on the phone and I thought your magazine might like to use this in the article. It's a charcoal sketch he did. Go ahead and keep it, I've got plenty more just like it. Hundreds, maybe. Mother kept them all, after he left."

Madoka accepted the package, feeling as if she were receiving an unwanted Christmas gift from a relative she barely knew. She left with the package under her arm and her camera around her neck, glad to be free of that clinging cat odor. Forty plus minutes of conversation had yielded less than a page of notes, but with the sun at just the right angle on the horizon it was not too late to get some good shots of the Ruins; the day needn't be completely wasted.

The smell of the salt breeze coming from the beach stung her nostrils. Hikaru had never particularly liked the ocean. She'd rather have lived anywhere but a coastal city, but the city was where the work was. She'd had a regular position as a staff photographer at a decent magazine for a while, but now she was back to being a stringer, living off of freelance work and making it by job to job. The assignment about the Ruins had been a lucky break, but breaks were fewer and further between all the time. She crested the hill and started down the hiking trail, toward her destination.

The beach that served as the fringe to the city's westernmost side terminated on the north in a series of rocky pools particularly hazardous to anyone traversing the coast, by land or by sea. But the spectacular views of the waves crashing against the shore had always encouraged developers to build on the bluffs overlooking the area, which is why, a hundred years ago, the old mayor built his theater palace here. People in the city would come all the way out to the beach complex for circus acts and dancing shows and the indoor pool and whatever else the wizards who owned the place cooked up. They'd even had a museum of ancient Egyptian artifacts. But in the '50s it fell on hard times and the family sold it to an outsider, Gerald Cohen, who closed it ten years later and then skipped town. No sooner was he gone than the whole thing burnt to the ground.

Carol's father himself disappeared, apparently never disembarking from the ship that carried him away from the city. He left behind a wife, a daughter (now an old woman who lived just a few blocks away in her cat-smelling ho use), and a legacy of unanswered questions. And the place where the pool and circus and the museum once was sat untouched for decades, slowly falling apart, filling in with water and silt and wild plants until it resembled an ancient ruin. And that was what people called it: the Ruins. It was never fully torn down; folks decided they liked the look of it. The crumbling stone walls and enormous, water-filled pits alongside the beach and the coastline looked more like the remains of a Roman village than anything a turn of the century showman built. The city decided they were beautiful. Although, the stringer reflected, as she set her tripod on a hill, to her the place had always looked creepy as hell. Even when she and Kyoya trained down here as a blader, she'd never liked it.

But she couldn't afford to only take the jobs she liked. It was fifty years since the fire and since Gerald disappeared, and his legend had only grown, so the magazine editors decided to run a big piece: "Gerald, Man and Myth." It didn't matter that there was nothing new to write about it or that Hikaru's photos would be just like any others that anyone had taken in five decades; people liked the mystery, and the mystery would sell magazines, which meant she could sell photos.

She spent an hour shooting. She caught the Ruins at sunset and the Ruins at twilight and even the Ruins at night, when it was really too dark to still be shooting but she kept shooting anyway. By the time she put her camera away the only light, besides the moon, came from the hotel on the cliffs to the south. It was just enough light to see Seal Rock by, although Hikaru decided that at this time of night it didn't really look like a rock at all. It looked like some giant whale just offshore was sticking its head up to get a good look at the city. A whale, or something else.

She went to WBBA Headquarters. There was a note on the door; Tsubasa had stopped by. She'd forgotten they had plans. That explained the flashing voice mail indicator on her phone as well. She ignored both, going inside and uploading the new photos. She missed the days of her old film camera; digital just wasn't the same, but it was cheaper and faster. Another compromise she'd made with the world. She studied the twilight photos most closely, scanning every square inch of the image. Nothing unusual was there, but she kept looking anyway. After two hours, she gave up. Another wasted day. She flopped onto the couch, picking up the magazine off the table. She turned to the most well-worn page, and there was a smiling picture of and the headline: "Gerald Cohen, Man or Myth?"

The magazine had gone to stands two weeks ago. She'd turned in the photos for it a week before that. The money from it had already been spent. She should have been chasing other leads, should have been getting after editors for more assignments, should have been paying her bills, but instead she kept going back to the Ruins day after day, taking more worthless photos. Hitting up Marianne had been a desperation move, and she'd felt bad about lying and saying she was there on assignment (the old bat was so senile she didn't even remember reading the finished article when it came out), but it was the only lead she'd had. Now it was a dud too. She should give up on it. But she couldn't. There was something about the Ruins only she knew. Something she couldn't let go of.

Thinking about Marianne reminded her of the sketch. She'd left it by the door, still wrapped in brown paper. She retrieved it. When the package was open she flinched; it was, as promised, a charcoal sketch. It depicted a mirror-flat expanse of ocean disturbed by an anomalous sea creature breaching the surface, foam spraying from its jaws and water streaming down its huge body. It was impossible to tell what the animal was actually supposed to be, but it made her think of some kind of dragon, bristling with flippers and fins. It was impossibly ugly. A few human swimmers were added for scale; they were tiny next to the monster, so small they were practically stick figures.

Hikaru frowned; why the hell would Marianne Cohen give her this? Then she chided herself; the old bird was nuts, what did she expect? And what had she said? That her father had done hundreds like this? She suddenly wished she'd had it before the story went to print. The editor probably would have loved it. It would have gone great with that one 'graph toward the end, how did it go? She picked the magazine up and read:

"Urban legend persists that Cohen himself set the fire that destroyed the pool complex. Not as an insurance scam, but to destroy the evidence of the secret, ritual murders he supposedly committed there. No serious historical evidence suggests any truth to these rumors, but local kids still sneak down to the Ruins late at night in hopes of hearing the ghostly screams of those said to have died there."

Kyoya snorted. All bullshit, of course. But people in this city loved their ghost stories. Benkei had, too.

Hikaru went back to the sketch. Something about it was bothering her. On a hunch, she opened the back of the frame and removed the delicate paper. In the lower right hand corner something was written. She thought at first it was Cohen's name or initials, but now she saw it was a word she didn't recognize. The closest she could decipher it was:

"Aspidochelone."

Curious, she went the computer to look it up:

"Aspidochelone is a fabled sea monster, variously described as a large whale or vast sea turtle. It was supposedly so large as to be mistaken for an island, its great shell appearing like a rocky outcropping. In some traditions, Aspidochelone is believed to be the Bible's 'great fish' that swallowed the prophet Jonah. Other myth cycles persist that it was an avatar of the devil."

Hikaru frowned. She held the sketch up to one of her photos of seal rock by night: the sea monster's humped back was in the exact shape of the stony island. Then she looked more closely at the swimming figures Cohen drew; at first she'd thought they must be fleeing the creature, but now it seemed they were actually swimming toward it. And they did not appear entirely human; they were bulky and shapeless things, though the tiny scale made it hard to determine their exact form. Even so, a little thrill went through her. She turned to the computer and clicked the file right in the middle of her desktop. A picture of the Ruins popped up; not any of the pictures she'd taken today and not any of the pictures she'd sold to the magazine. This was a picture only she had seen, a picture taken three weeks ago, just at dusk.

Everything was there as it should be: the crumbling walls, the deep pools, the shore, the surf, the rocks. Nothing seemed out of place at first glance; she'd almost missed it herself the when she'd uploaded the photos. But there, in the deepest pool right in the center of the Ruins, just beneath the surface, there was a shape. The water was dark and the light was poor, so it was hard to tell, but it looked remarkably like a person swimming to the surface. No, not a person; not quite. Just something a little like a person. Something that might live in the water and stay out of sight of normal people, until night came, when it could come to the surface without anyone seeing…

This picture was the reason she kept coming to the Ruins. This picture was the reason she'd interviewed the old woman, and the reason she kept reading and researching about Gerald Cohen. This was the reason she hadn't worked or seen Gingka or any of his friends in weeks. This picture, and the memory of something splashing in the water behind her as she folded up her tripod and left that day, and an older memory, one of little Carol Cohen, and her frightened voice in the dark.

She held the Cohen sketch next to her monitor. The shape in the photo was ill-defined, and the figures in the sketch were tiny, but they looked alike. Didn't they? She flipped back and forth between her photos: The rock, and the back of Aspidochelone; the swimmers, and the shape in the pool. Yes, they all matched. And that meant…

What did it mean? Hikaru wasn't sure. She rubbed her forehead; it was late, and she hadn't slept enough all week. She turned the computer off and flopped into bed, not even bothering to take off her shoes. Outside, the wind was blowing. The branches of the trees scraped her windows. Her water bill was due tomorrow. Her rent was due a week later. She didn't know where the money would come from. She told herself she should not spend tomorrow afternoon at the Ruins again and should not spend tomorrow morning at the library or the historical society, looking for any new information about Gerald Cohen. She should look for work instead. But she knew that she wouldn't. She couldn't let this thing go. She felt like she owed it to Carol. Poor Carol. After all these years…

As she slept, she thought she heard rain splashing on her window. But she couldn't be sure.

In her dream, she was six years old again. In her dream, Little Carol was waking her up in the middle of the night. In her dream, Hikaru rolled over and said, "What is it, Carol?" And her sounded frightened as she said:

"It's the man. The man from the beach."

She sat up under the covers. She could not see Carol in the dark, but she knew he was right by her bedside. "What man?"

"The one from last night, when we snuck down to the Ruins. Remember, I told you I saw him in the water?"

In her dream she was frightened, but she didn't show it. She knew Carol was only trying to scare her. "You didn't see any man in the water."

"I did. But he wasn't really a man; he was all scaly, like a fish, and he had a horrible face."

"You didn't see any man," she said. But her voice cracked. "Go back to bed."

Little Carol was quiet for a second. She said again:

"What's the matter, Carol?"

In the dark, Little Carol shivered.

"H-He's outside our window…"

Hikaru was screaming. No, someone else was screaming. No, that wasn't a scream, it was… the phone?

She sat up in bed (her feet ached; really should have taken off her shoes before she fell asleep…) and groped for her cell phone on the bedside table. The tiny, shrieking ring cut off as she pushed the button. "Hello?" she said.

"He came and talked to me," said a sweet voice on the other end.

Hikaru blinked and sat up. She checked the clock: four in the morning. Then she looked at the call number: it was Marianne, Gerald Cohen's crazy old wife. Never should have given the old bat my phone number, Hikaru thought. "Who talked to you?" she said.

"Tsubasa Otori."

Hikaru jolted awake. She almost dropped the phone, but stopped herself. After swallowing the lump in her throat she said: "Tsubasa?"

"Yes," said Marianne. Her voice was even softer than usual, but it was brimming with enthusiasm. "We had such a nice talk. And he gave me a message for you. He told me to call you right away."

"Marianne, your husbandwould be…" She did the math. "A hundred and four years old, and died since 1966?"

"I know. He looked really good for his age."

Hikaru laughed; she couldn't help it. Kicking her shoes off, she rubbed her sore feet. "So what did he tell you that couldn't wait until morning?"

"He said to tell you that the fire was the important thing."

"What does that mean?"

Marianne sounded confused. "He said you would know."

"Not a clue." Now that she was fully awake and the residue of her dream was fading the conversation seemed a bit more real. She wondered if Marianne had been dreaming too; or maybe there wasn't much difference between waking and dreaming once you went that nuts?

Then Marianne said: "My daughter was here too."

Hikaru almost dropped the phone.

"Oh, he had a message for you also," Marianne said. "He said for you to remember what he told you about Obie."

This time Hikaru did drop the phone. When she picked it up again Marianne was saying goodbye. "Wait!" Hikaru said, but the call ended.

She considered calling back, but instead she set the phone aside and stared at the window, stunned. "Remember what he told you about Obie?" Impossible. The old woman couldn't possibly know about that. Hikaru racked her brain trying to remember if she had ever mentioned Marianne's daughter's name during the interview. Of course, she hadn't; why the hell would she? She wanted to call back right that second and demand an explanation. It took her a moment to realize why she wasn't: She was afraid.

At the B-pit, Madoka went to her computer. The fire was the important thing, huh? She pulled up all the notes she'd gathered about the fire at the Ruins. She read it all again. She even watched the old newsreel footage of it the fire as it happened. She gathered no particular insights from it. She sat at her desk for another hour, lost in thought. When it was late enough in the morning, she picked up the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart by now. A voice on the other end said: "Western Neighborhoods Project." She asked for the director by name. They were one of the oldest and busybodiest historical groups in the city. If they couldn't tell her what she wanted to know, nobody could.

She was afraid she might go to voicemail, but eventually the woman she wanted answered. "Hello Dr. Olmstead," Madoka said. "I had another research question for you."

"About the Ruins?" Olmstead said. "I thought your magazine already ran that story?"

"They did, but I'm doing a little follow up." She paged through her email as she talked; no paying offers, although there were plenty of blogs who wanted permission to run her photos. None were offering any money. "I was just wondering, about the fire…" She hesitated.

"Yes?" Olmstead said.

Not entirely sure why she was asking, the stringer said, "I was wondering…is there any truth to the rumors that human remains were found in the wreckage?"

"None at all," Olmstead said. But she said it too fast. As if she'd been expecting it and had that answer prepared.

"Now, I see," Madoka said. "I thought that…well, it's just, I have a lead that there was something unusual or… important about the fire itself, and I was just wondering if there was anything that wasn't already common knowledge?"

"I don't think so. I'm afraid I really have to go, Miss—"

"What about the name Aspidochelone, do you know anything about that?" It was a shot in the dark, but as soon as she said it the stringer knew she'd hit the mark: Olmstead gasped. She covered the phone so that the stringer wouldn't hear, but she was too slow. Madoka's scalp tingled with the excitement of a new lead. "Doctor?" she said. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, but I… let me call you back." Before Madoka could say anything the line went dead. She set the phone down, deciding to give it twenty minutes before she called back. After eighteen, the phone rang.

"I'm going to give you a name and a phone number, and then that's the last thing I want to hear about this," Olmstead said. The stringer didn't argue, grabbing her notepad and a pencil. "The man you want is named Allen. I've already spoken with him and he has time for an appointment today. He lives here in the city." Madoka wrote down the name and the number when Olmstead gave it.

"Thank you, Dr. Olmstead," Madoka said. "I really appreciate—" But by then Olmstead had hung up again.

Hikaru stopped to lock the door on her way out. As she did, her eyes fell across something on the floor, a wet spot on the hallway carpet. She frowned; the stain hadn't been there the night before. Whatever someone has spilled, it smelled back, gray and briny. It reminded her of the ocean. If she turned her head, it almost looked like a footprint, although not a print that would be left by any normal foot…

She hurried down to the elevator and out into the street. Her appointment was in an hour. She could just barely make it.

The door said: "Z. Allen," nothing else. It was the kind of nameplate you usually saw on a college professor's door, but it was fixed to the front of an ugly little house on Laguna Street. It was so out of place that it made the stringer hesitate before knocking, and before she could work her nerve up again the door opened on its own. She was greeted by a bald, pop-eyed man, probably the same age as Marianne Cohen. He smiled and greeted her by name. "Dr. Olmstead said you'd be stopping by. Let's talk in the library."

The library turned out to be a spare bedroom converted into ad hoc office, though there were a great many shelves full of aged books. There were two pictures on the wall, one of a young woman holding a baby and one that seemed to be a much younger Z. Allen, surprisingly wearing a fireman's uniform. The stringer sat in the spare chair, notebook at the ready, and then she realized she actually had no idea what she wanted to ask. Allen came to her rescue:

"I suppose you want to know about the Dagonites?"

"I do? I mean, yes, I do."

"Old Olmstead sounded annoyed when she called. She hates people pestering her about the Dagon thing, but I love to talk turkey about it. Or tuna, as the case may be." Hikaru could tell she was supposed to laugh at this, so she did.

"Are you on the board of the Western Neighborhoods Project?"

"No, I'm just someone they keep on call. Amateur historian. With my own peculiar specialties. In this case, the Esoteric Order of Dagon. What do you know about it so far?"

"Um, not much." She scribbled the words "Esoteric order dgn" on her pad, the unfamiliar "Esoteric" spelled in full so she would not mistake it later.

" I guess you're too young to remember the Summer of Love?"

"I'm more of a winter person."

"Yes, there's not too many of us original flower children left. What people don't realize is that the counterculture wasn't just free love and walking barefoot down Haight Street. There were all sorts of… well, I hesitate to call them cults, but let's say, new and alternate religions and belief systems that were popping up around that time. Especially here in the city. Krishnas, the People's Temple, Scientologists, hell, even the Church of Satan." He made a vague gesture.

"And the Order of Dagon?"

"Indeed, the Order of Dagon. Although according to them, they weren't exactly new. They said they were thousands of years old, maybe tens of thousands. The Dagonites were something else. A special case even in a time of special cases."

"What did they believe?"

"Hard to say. They were very secretive. And there weren't very many of them, maybe a dozen in the city altogether. The came from back east somewhere."

"Why'd they come here?"

"Religious pilgrimage. They said this was a sacred site. They worshiped the ocean, you see. No, not the ocean exactly; an ocean god. They called it Dagon, but sometimes other names: Cetus or Tiamat or—"

"Aspidochelone?"

"Yes, that was one." He looked at her strangely for a moment. "They said that it was an ancient sea creature older than the world and they took just about any myth about a sea monster to be a story about their 'god' by some name or another. They were all completely nuts, of course; even back then we could tell."

Hikaru pondered for a moment. "What does this have to do with the Ruins?"

"Haven't you guessed? Before he disappeared, George Wayland was rumored to be a convert to the Esoteric Order of Dagon."

"So the urban legends about human sacrifice…?"

"Related. The Dagonites didn't practice human sacrifice, of course. But they did have a peculiar ritual that made people ask lots of questions after Wayland disappeared."

The words scribbled in her notebook jumped out at Hikaru: "The fire is the important thing." She bit her lip.

"They gave burnt offerings to their god, didn't they?"

"That they did. Sea creatures were best, but apparently anything would do: a dog, a chicken. The bigger the better, as long as it was dead already. You could burn objects, too, if they were important enough to you."

"The bigger the better? Say, an entire building?"

"Now you're getting it. And with Wayland believed to be associating with Dagonites, and all of them disappearing around the same time he did, and then his complex burns down… well, you can guess what people thought."

Hikaru was writing faster than she could keep up with. "And this was an important ritual for them?"

"The most important of all. A burnt offering at the right holy site was supposed to awaken Dagon, or Aspidochelone, or whatever you want to call it. And then…"

Hikaru sat forward. "Then what?"

"Well, no one else ever really could figure that part out." Allen sat sideways in his chair a bit, looking at her in his peripheral vision. "All they would ever say is that after that you became 'One with Dagon.' But they'd never say exactly what that meant."

Hikaru put her notes down. "And they all disappeared?"

"In 1966, virtually the same day as the fire." Allen folded his hands and arched his eyebrows, seemingly inviting her to draw her own conclusions.

"'One with Dagon,'" Hikaru repeated. "Is there anything else?"

"Not much. Here," He handed her a thumb drive. "I have a special file on it, for when people come asking."

Hikaru blinked. "Do people ask about this a lot?"

"Not a lot. But often enough."

"I've never heard anything about it."

"Well, they don't usually share what they learn."

"Why not?"

"You'd have to ask them. Although truth be known I understand that most of them usually leave town for one reason or another. I've never talked to the same person twice about it, except for Dr. Olmstead."

"But why—?"

Now Allen's face told her she shouldn't ask anything else. Taking the thumb drive, she thanked him and left.

Kyoya had left another note on the door: "We have to talk." Hikaru ignored it. Madoka stepped over a pile of bills overflowing the mail slot, going straight to her computer, plugging in the thumb drive and not even bothering to check her email for the job offers that wouldn't be there. This was more important. Hikaru poured over Allen's notes, but in truth she didn't really need them. She'd figured it all out. They'd given her all the answers that morning: "The fire was the important thing," and "Remember what he said about Lily."

In her mind, Hikaru was six again, and Little Carol was waking her up, scared, in the middle of the night, and pointing to the window. "It's the man in the water," he said. "He says I have to go with him."

She looked at the window for a split second, but then looked away. Was there really something there? She didn't want to know. Instead she hugged the covers tighter and said, "You're fibbing. If there's really someone there then go get Dad."

Little Carol shook her head. "I can't. I don't' want him to know…" Her voice faltered for a second. "I did a bad thing," she said. "I… I dug up Lily."

"What?" she'd sat all the way up then, too angry to still be afraid.

"I'm sorry!" Little Carol said. She could tell Little Carol was crying.

"She was my cat, mine!"

"I know, I know! But I'd heard, I mean, they say that if you take something, you know, something dead, and you burn it at the right spot—:"

"Burn it? You mean you… ?"

"I'm sorry! I just wanted to see what would happen. I wanted to have something to show you when we snuck out. And now… now he says I have to go with him." And Little Carol pointed to the window again. And she had looked. And as much as she'd tried to, she never really forgot the face she saw there…

She'd run then, screaming, into Gerald's room, and he said that it was just a nightmare. But when they got back to the bedroom, Little Carol was gone. The window was open, and there was water on the floor. And nothing was ever the same again.

She never told anyone what Little Carol said about Lily. And she never told about the face at the window, though for a long time she'd only ever remembered it in dreams. The photo made her really remember again. That shape in the water, just a little too familiar, just a little too human…

Her phone beeped; she started. Hours had passed, and it was dark out now. She assumed the message was from Gingka and she was about to turn the phone off, but then she saw that it was an unfamiliar number. The message said:

COME 2 MARIANNES. HURRY.

And beneath that:

RMBR OB

That was all she needed. She was out the door in a flash. She barely had the presence of mind to bring her camera. She ran two red lights crossing town. What would the tickets matter? They could pile up, unopened, with the rest of the bills. She came to Marianne Cohen's house. The door was open, so she let herself in. That strange cat odor was gone. It had been replaced by something else.

She found Marianne at the foot of the stairs. She must have taken a nasty fall. Or perhaps, Hikaru couldn't help but think as she observed the wet and misshapen footprints still visible on the carpet, a nasty push? It didn't matter. Hikaru wrapped the body in a blanket and then lifted the ungainly, long-limbed corpse and hauled it outside. Dear God, she thought, what if the neighbors see me? She hastened to get the body in her backseat as fast as she could. She searched the garage and came up with a gas can that had a slosh of liquid in the bottom, and she took that too. And then she was driving to the Ruins.

There were no tourists, no joggers, and no kids around this time. That was lucky. The trail leading down was steep and she had a hard time with her arms full of the old woman's body, and dragging the gas can along too. She wondered, briefly, if she really had to go this far with it, but the text message had made it perfectly clear for her. Gerald Cohen had needed to burn this whole place down to do the trick for himself and a dozen other Dagonites. Carol had only needed a cat, but she'd been nine years old. The bigger the better, Allen had said, so the stringer wasn't going to take any chances. She suspected you only got one shot at this.

The ocean wind was particularly cold that night. There was no moon, but she could see the great rock off the coast anyway. Was this the right spot? It had to be. Where else was there? She set the corpse down in the rolled up blanket and doused it with gas. She hoped no one from the hotel was watching. She only needed a minute without anyone interrupting to do this right. The box of matches rattled in her trembling fingers; it took four tries to get a match that stayed lit even with the wind. She held her breath, looking at the bundle on the wet sand. Was she really going through with this? But then the match dropped from her fingers and a WHUMP! of heat and black acrid smoke hit her square in the face, and the decision was out of her hands.

The fire burned out fast, but the heat was intense. Sickening fumes from the blanket's synthetic fibers mingled with even less pleasant odors. She held her breath as long as she could, and retched when she couldn't. Nearby, the waves crashed against the rocks over and over again. She watched as the body burnt down to bones and the bones burnt down to ashes. She expected at any moment for someone to come along, for her to see flashing lights and hear sirens, but it didn't happen. Nothing else happened either. When the embers were out, there was just a black spot on the sand and a lingering stench. Hikaru wiped at her eyes; was that it? Had she not done it right? Or was it that she'd been wrong? That there was nothing to the stories? That she was going—

Movement. Out there, somewhere? It was dark, but she could still swear that the huge rock, the small island just offshore, was moving? But that's impossible, she told herself, the water here isn't deep enough for anything that big. Unless most of it is buried? Buried in the ocean floor for thousands, maybe even millions of years, only stirring when someone made the offerings, when someone was ready to become One with Dagon? And that's when she saw the lumbering shape coming toward the shore. The man in the water. And not just one. Lots of them were coming. Lots and lots, drawn by her signal fire. They paddled toward her, scaly flesh dripping with brine. She was glad it was dark; she still remembered that childhood face at the window. She did not want to see faces like that again.

But she knew that one of those faces would be the one she was looking for. And then she'd finally be able to say that she was sorry. That she missed him. That she loved him. That she'd done all this just to see him again, one last time, no matter how.

And then? The great rock (not a rock at all, of course) was still moving out in the surf. And those things coming to shore would not just leave when she wanted them to. She had made the offering; she had signaled that she was ready to become One with Dagon. She suspected that Dagon was not the type to take no for an answer.

At her feet, in the tide, something splashed and slithered and slid through the muck on its belly. She saw something like a hand reaching up for her. If not for the wind and the surf, she would hear a roaring and crashing just off shore. It was time. It was time.

Oh God—!

* * *

 **Thanks for reading. Now, if like this chapter, please review. Look out for...**

 _ **'Hearts Of Darkness'**_


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